Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
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Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

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By Rick Holmes

Jan. 22, 2014
5:08 p.m.

Dana Milbank has a column today certain to get a rise out of† Rob. His topic is this week’s Republican primary for a House seat in Florida, in which a corporate lobbyist defeated a local GOP pol and a retired Marine general supported by the tea party. An excerpt:

The tea party has lost clout because the anger that once fueled the movement is fading. Frustration with government remains high, but the Conference Board, a corporate group that tracks consumer confidence, said in its most recent report that consumer sentiment regarding current economic conditions has reached its highest level since April 2008, before the financial meltdown. The spreading optimism has put into question the tea partyís warnings of an American collapse and attendant exhortations to buy gold and stockpile arms and food.

As I’ve argued before, the Tea Party, like the New Left and other flash-in-the-pan mass movements, lost faith in America.† It desperately wants to see America collapse from the flaws so obvious to them. But America is more resilient than that. Want to see pre-revolutionary desperation? Go to Syria, the Central African Republic or any number of countries where tyranny and privation are pushing citizens to the breaking point.† It’s not happening here.